Breath Laced With Alcohol and Wings in Perpetual Molt

Sometimes, the best way to get a picture of someone is to look at where and how they live.

He lives in the basement apartment of an old fashioned boarding house. The room is in the corner of the house, which is itself on the corner of the block. There are three windows at sidewalk level, two on the long wall facing the front, one on the short wall facing the side yard. He likes the view from that one the best: it's overgrown with ivy and weeds. In the mornings, the light shines through tinted green. While nobody really goes down to bother him, sometimes kids peek in through the windows and stare.

The floor is strewn with old bottles and older feathers, all resting on top of a thick layer of dust. He doesn't move around much. It's okay, though, his landlord doesn't care about the mess. The landlord likes to pretend he doesn't exist at all.

He was probably tall once, though it's hard to tell now: he's always hunched over. His clothes used to be white, but time and use have worn them down into a sickly shade of gray.

He keeps his wings tucked back, folded tightly and hidden beneath a brown coat one of the neighborhood kids brought him.

He usually sits in his corner, drowning his sorrows and thinking about the old days. Decades of drink and distance have worn the memories thin until they've all blurred together. He's not sure which ones happened years ago and which ones happened just yesterday. Sometimes he's certain he's always been in the basement. That he's always been sitting down there, hunched over and folded in on himself. Maybe he has. Maybe he is just some freak, creating false memories to while away the hours.

At night he dreams of flight. The wind pounds in his ears while blood pumps through his veins. He feels the warmth of the sun and the honest freedom that comes with flying. He hears wings beating across the sky-

- and then he wakes up, roused by the beating of his own wings. Like a dog kicking in its sleep, he's been trying to fly while remaining thoroughly grounded.

He sighs, then, and crawls back to his corner. He'll pick up one of the empty bottles at random and lift it to his lips. With very little fuss, the bottle is full again, and he can have his drink.

He doesn't know why he's there, and he doesn't know what he is. At the moment, though, he doesn't care.